


Names

by odoridango



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen, Slurs, Trans Character, Trans Eren, Transmisogyny, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-18
Updated: 2014-11-18
Packaged: 2018-02-26 03:47:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2636831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odoridango/pseuds/odoridango
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She gets called a lot of things, but there's only one thing she wants to hear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Names

**Author's Note:**

> After hearing that genderbenders are transphobic, I decided to try and write a trans headcanon. I'm worried about misrepresentation since I'm not trans myself, so feel free to tell me if I wrote something offensive or highly inaccurate. I am fine with taking this down if need be. 
> 
> Please be aware that the following content does/may include triggering content such as transphobia, transphobic slurs, and transmisogyny, and perhaps gender dysphoria.

 

 

It’s more difficult than she thought it would be, sometimes, seeing her name unchanged on her birth certificate, that awkward reminder, or getting disgusted looks for wearing what she wants, when she wants to. Normally she doesn’t do much differently from what she’s always done, because in some ways, she hasn’t changed at all. But it only makes what has changed that much clearer –the dead silence of her cell phone because she’s purged her contacts, the bated quiet in her mind which ricochets to crippling levels of insecurity and disgust on the bad days, the patient, if longsuffering looks her girlfriends give her when she tells them about some new insult, only to find it isn’t new at all. Sometimes, she’s the one who does damage, and quietly, quietly, sitting shoulder to shoulder with her friends, she learns.

A boy bothers her while she waits for Annie to come out of the gym. Every Friday, Annie gets out of her post-gym shower at four in the afternoon on the dot, just as she leaves her internship and Armin leaves his shift at the billiards club. They go out for movies together, take advantage of the matinee at the local cinema. There’s no better sport than watching Armin and Annie rip a film apart.

He won’t leave her alone. Calls her dozens of things, baby, honey, sugar pie, and she feels like she’s had a bucket of slime poured over her. This hasn’t happened before, but she’s heard about it in the stories she’s heard from Ymir, from Sasha, from Mikasa, and she gets it now, she gets it. She feels the hem of her skirt fluttering around her knees acutely because he keeps trying to touch, keeps leering even when she scowls at him and squares her shoulders, at least until she opens her mouth and tells him to back the fuck off, Adam’s apple bobbing.

He rocks back on his heels, offended and stunned, before he reels back in, face twisting into an ugly sneer. He tries to grab her, calls her all sorts of things, says the words, says tranny, she-male, slut—

But she’s never let anyone badmouth her and get away with it and she takes him down like a like a sack of potatoes, knuckles gleaming with his blood.

Annie is quiet as she walks over to stand still at her side. She caught her trying on Mikasa’s uniform after hours in the locker room once, in high school, when their gym bags had gotten switched. As she babbled a nonsense stream of excuses, Annie merely cocked her head and said that if she ever wanted to beat her in judo, she would have to work on her leg strength a little more.

Annie gives her a tissue; she wipes the blood off her hand, wipes off the grime and the filth. There’s dirt on her skirt. It’s the first time she’s ever worn this skirt outside, even though Armin gave it to her for her birthday years ago. He’s always been perceptive.

Annie doesn’t take her hand, doesn’t hug her, just moves ahead towards the main streets. She pauses to turn back and call her name, the name that fits, the name she chose.

Hearing it feels good.


End file.
